“Ancient Stones”
The repurposing of the ancient stones gave me pause for thought. The act of it, the fact of it, meant that lives moved like ours, that monuments became obsolete, that times moved on. Ancient times. Times lost to time. Styles came in and out of fashion. Architectural trends. Religious trends. Ancient people looked out of their windows in the morning and slowly decided this was not for them. My god, the kids – the youth, they looked at the stones and decided they were old fashioned, that they were the stones of their parents, they were Perry Como stones, and it was time to usher in the... well, the… the Rolling stones. Loin cloths went out of style, just like the ancient stones. It wouldn’t just be the whim of the masons, would it? When they said, what shall we build this new temple with, and they were answered, with the stones of that old temple over there, were they not also asking, when are these jewels no longer desirable? Yes, it’s the realisation that these stones moved with the times. They were not left there for us. Just as I don’t leave my garden shed for the magnifying glasses of the future giant archaeologists of Mars. Although now I’ve acknowledged them, it’s hard not to consider them. Maybe even hard not to mess with them. Maybe, how not to mess with the giant archaeologists of Mars? How to have them realise we had lives, not just legacies, days to be lived and not just understood, that we had items in our hands, not simply relics in their excavations? Yes, it was the repurposing of the ancient stones that gave me pause for thought.
And she looked at me across the table as we waited for our entrees to be collected, her eyes glistening behind the candle flame, and I realised that as I answered her question, I had not been looking at her, I had not been looking at her for some time, but I was gazing past her, out the window across the moonlit bay, to that old volcano coughing into life.
Gary Raymond is a novelist, author, playwright, critic, and broadcaster. In 2012, he co-founded Wales Arts Review, was its editor for ten years. His latest book, Abandon All Hope: A Personal Journey Through the History of Welsh Literature is out now with Calon Books.